Peter Svidler wins the 7th Gibtelecom tournament in Gibraltar

2/6/2009 – After nine rounds five GMs were tied for first. Peter Svidler beat Pentala Harikrishna and Vadim Milov beat Boris Avrukh in round ten to force a rapid chess tiebreak, which Svidler won quite convincingly to take the £15,000 first prize. Best female player was Nana Dzagnidze of Georgia. We have a pictorial report plus video footage of Peter doing something you have never seen him do before.

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The 7th edition of Gibraltar's Gibtelecom Chess Festival was held from Tuesday
January 27 to Thursday February 5, 2009 at the Caleta Hotel, one of Gibraltar's
best hotels.

One round before the end there was a huge pile-up, with five players, Peter
Svidler, Vugar Gashimov, Pentala Harikrishna, Vadim Milov, and Hikaru Nakamura,
in the joint lead with 7.0/9 points. Actually eight players could theoretically
tie for first place at the end of ten rounds - if results went the right way
for them and the wrong way for their opponents. However, there can be no joint
winners in Gibraltar. In the event of a tie the players have to take part in
a rapid play play-off for the £15,000 first prize. However, the play-off
was limited to four players so that if more than four tied for first, only the
four with the highest Tournament Performance Rating would take part in the play-off

In the final (tenth) round Hikaru Nakamura spoilt a promising position against
Vugar Gashimov (He played 30.Qxg5? instead of 30.e5!+–) and drew in 37
moves. Both finished at 7.5/10. Peter Svidler defeated co-leader Pentala Harikrishna
in 50 moves to score 8.0/10 and put "Hari" out of contention. And
Vadim Milov beat Boris Avrukh with the black pieces in 40 moves to tie with
Svidler for first place. .

35.d5? White is on the defensive – 35.Kg1 or 35.Kg2
is required if he is to have any chances of survival. 35...Rexh3+ 36.Kg1
Rh1+ 37.Kf2 R1h2+ and because of 38.Ke1 Rxd2 39.Kxd2 Rxd5+ White is
lost. 0-1.

It is of course all over, but Milov has set a nice little trap: 29.Bxd8? Qc5+
30.Kh1 Nf2+ and although this would not necessarily save him (31.Qxf2 Qxf2 32.Rcc1+–)
it would at least disconcert his opponent. 29.Qe3. Naturally
Svidler has seen it. 29...Rd6 30.Bb5 Nb2 31.Rxd6 Qxd6 32.Bd4 Nd1 33.Bxc4+
Kh8 34.Qd2 1-0.

The tournament bulletin tells us that Peter Svidler was following the cricket
test match between England and the West Indies, and was actually getting updates
of the score during his games. We know this from Peter, but had never seen him
wield a cricket bat before.

An heroic image: Peter Svidler actually playing cricket!

Thankfully his foray onto the cricket field was filmed and placed on YouTube
by Zeljka Malobabic of MonRoi.

In this video you see Manuel Weeks of Australia bowling to Peter Svidler, who
aquits himself fairly with the bat. His own attempts at bowling are not so successful
– that's throwing or chucking, Peter, and would get you a "no ball"
from any umpire. The best part is when Irina Krush dons the pads and tries her
hand at batting. What a feisty gal!

Just as heroic: Irina Krush on the cricket pitch

If your are in the mood you can watch a lot of chess videos posted by Zeljka
on YouTube.

See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!